The present invention relates to plants for directly feeding cigarettes from manufacturing machines to packeting machine and for compensating unbalances in the outputs of said machines. More particularly, its subject matter is a switching device for switching the flow of cigarettes moving towards the packeting machine in a continuous or uniform succession and arranged transversely with respect to their longitudinal flow.
As known, the path followed by said flow of cigarettes moving towards the packeting machine has a hopper-feeding run on one side which is arranged to directly feed the hopper of the packeting machine, and on the other side it communicates via a different run with a compensating store device of the type described in the Patent Applications Nos. 651,332 and 651,334 of the same Applicant now U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,056,915 and 4,056,916 respectively.
Still as known, in normal operating conditions of the packeting machine, the flow of cigarettes follows the first of said different runs, whereas the cigarettes move along the second run if said packeting machine stops for any reason.
An object of the present invention is thus to provide a cigarette switching device which is arranged to switch the cigarette flow at a branching area along the first run during the normal operation of the packeting machine, or alternatively, along the second run if said machine stops.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a device of the above-mentioned type which is particularly simple in structure, is rapid and reliable in operation and does not damage in any way the cigarettes when it intervenes on them.